


we were together and i forget the rest

by imgoingtocrash



Series: Pepperony Week 2019 [4]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: During the five year gap, F/M, Family Fluff, Fluff, Mid-Endgame, Pepperony Week, Recovering from The Snap, Tony Stark Loves His Family On A Warm Fall Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-11 17:16:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20157208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imgoingtocrash/pseuds/imgoingtocrash
Summary: He’s stolen this quiet moment alone with Pepper, though. Morgan is content to stay in the water until her little fingers prune, and she’s dragged Rhodey into being her personal plaything. He's throwing her back and forth across the water while she shrieks with glee as if it can never possibly get old. In contrast, Tony and Pepper have put back on their warmer overclothes, content to simply watch until it's time to go inside.It’s been a good day. Tony tries to keep that at the forefront of his mind.It’s been three years since The Snap. The Starks and Rhodey have a family lake day.





	we were together and i forget the rest

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Pepperony Week Day 5! This fic was inspired by [this fanart](https://imgoingtocrash.tumblr.com/post/185567533694). The prompt for Day 5 is Missing Scenes (5 Years Mid-Endgame), so have more of the Stark family loving what they have to cope with what they've lost. :)
> 
> The title is from _Dark Highways_ by Jared & The Mill.

“You awake back there?”

Tony makes a hum of noise instead of actually replying. It’s fair of Pepper to ask—he’s more nap-prone than he used to be since they had Morgan. He’s also had his face buried in Pepper’s bare shoulder for a fair amount of time.

He places a kiss against the exposed freckles of her skin there, tasting the lingering sheen of sunscreen they’d sprayed across themselves and Morgan in preparation for being outside for most of the day. His arms encircle Pepper’s waist, keeping her on his lap where they sit, propped on a tree trunk near the lake.

She’s wearing modest denim shorts and a tank top over her surely un-modest bikini, and that temptation alone had practically veered Tony's mind straight off course this morning from having a family day at the lake with Rhodey to keeping her in their bedroom and making everyone else wait until he was through.

Instead, he’d whispered his compliments in her ear for the chance to see her blush in the early fall sun. Only Rhodey’s rolled eyes at them both gave away Tony's intentions at riling his wife up.

He’s stolen this quiet moment alone with Pepper, though. Morgan is content to stay in the water until her little fingers prune, and she’s dragged Rhodey into being her personal plaything. He's throwing her back and forth across the water while she shrieks with glee as if it can never possibly get old. In contrast, Tony and Pepper have put back on their warmer overclothes, content to simply watch until it's time to go inside.

It’s been a good day. Tony tries to keep that at the forefront of his mind. 

Pepper is alive in his arms. Her wedding ring is cold against his own where their hands touch. Her toenails are bright red and perfectly manicured against the grass.

His daughter has his mother’s hair and Pepper’s laugh. She likes almost every kind of animal, coloring books, and she loves sugar cookies more than chocolate chip. She can count to one hundred already, and is very proud when she can read certain books for herself at bedtime.

Behind them is their home. He sketched the first blueprints the day after Pepper told him she was pregnant. It is the place where he married his wife, where his daughter took her first steps, where Happy spilled beer on the carpet in the living room during the housewarming party, and where Rhodey cooked breakfast for them this morning in the kitchen.

He was almost lost to the black of space, but here he is back on Earth, a Terran in his place living an entirely un-extraordinary life. He works on suits that he doesn’t wear, prepares defenses for attacks that never come. He mourns and surrenders to the demons of his mind during sleep, then wakes in the morning and watches his daughter spill milk all over herself trying to eat her cereal too quickly.

It’s been exactly three years since the Snap, today, since Peter Parker crumbled into ash in his arms, and he’s just _sitting here_—

Pepper’s warm smile turns into something a little more sad, more empathetic, looking back at him. It brings him back into the here and now, clearing the stinging of his eyes and the regrets and anger that go with them.

He’s trying to grieve better. He’s trying to recover. He’s finding his peace where he can get it, one day at a time.

He breathes in, the warm air of the forest around their home filling his lungs and expelling out with purpose. He squeezes Pepper, reassuring. “M’okay.”

“You don’t have to be,” Pepper says, understanding of his inner turmoil. Who out in the galaxy, in some way, didn’t? Pepper, though, she’d always known him. He was a man of action and conviction, of genius and invention, and yet in this he’d tried and failed. He’d given in to the passage of time, moved away from the life of heroism, and secretly wondered every year, just like this, if he could fix things, if he hadn’t tried hard enough.

The first year after was the worst of them for Tony. A baby on the way and he’d regressed into bad habits—slamming back a bottle of scotch and trying to forget. Now he talks to a therapist online, and he tries to stay present, and he handles things like the man he knows his wife and daughter deserve. It helps so well that he probably should have tried it years ago.

Tony shrugs, knowing she can’t see it in his hold, but that she can feel it. “It’s worse to dwell,” he admits. Sometimes you have to sit in your grief to understand it and handle it. He’s done his wallowing, now he’s moving on to, well, moving on. His train of thought today is a bump in the road, but an acceptable one.

Tonight, he is going to grill Rhodey a fantastic cut of beef on the grill, put his daughter to bed with the stories of heroes who always win, and go to sleep thankful for the life he’s built in this after, knowing the Snap broke the universe, but it didn’t break him.

Until then…

Tony takes advantage of Pepper’s momentary distraction—Morgan’s currently riding Rhodey’s shoulders and waving at them from her perch much like a queen at a royal parade. Tony presses his lips to Pepper’s neck, then pushes out a quick burst of air, the raspberry kiss making her giggle and wriggle against his hold in a way that lights up Tony’s smile.

“Tony!” Pepper laughs, wiggling in his arms. He keeps his hands locked around her tight, trailing the kisses over her shoulders, only loosening his grip to move an arm to her extremely ticklish ribs. “T—Tony, no!”

“Tony, yes,” he mumbles into her skin, tone playful, alternating between kissing her skin and tickling her, a distraction enough on its own for when he picks her up, walking towards the water. 

Pepper lets out a scream of “No, no, no!” but doesn’t kick too much when he changes the hold to a more bridal carry. His body isn’t exactly happy with him for it, but he put the muscle mass he lost in space back on a long time ago, and it compensates for the whining of his arm and other old injuries.

Rhodey watches with interest while Morgan is cheering him on, bouncing her little body so hard she almost falls off of Rhodey’s shoulders.

Fully clothed, Tony dunks himself and his wife in the lake, ruining their dry clothes and weighing them both down when they bob up for air.

“You’re in for it now, Stark,” Pepper growls, splashing Tony directly in the face with a wave of lake water.

“Get Daddy!” Morgan commands, jumping from Rhodey into the water, her water wings turning the dive-bomb into more of a soft plop.

“Attack!” Rhodey shouts, demonstrating to Morgan the apparent best way to douse Tony.

Tony laughs as his family assaults him with water, his mind far away from ashes, loss, and the things he cannot change for now.

**Author's Note:**

> There were a lot of ways to take this prompt, but since some of my other fics for the week are longer, this short but sweet little thing about being able to grieve and appreciate what you have at the same time is what came out.
> 
> Also, that art is AMAZING, so upon seeing it many weeks ago, I instantly told myself I wanted to write that scene, whatever it ended up being.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! My last two fics for Pepperony Week are some of my favorites of the bunch after Day 1, so I hope you like them too! All comments, kudos, etc. are appreciated as always!


End file.
